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Thursday, 14 April 2016

Our First Trip Away Together (part two)

Thursday morning we woke up early and made our way down to the restaurant for breakfast. A nice cooked breakfast was just what we needed as we'd got a busy day ahead of us.

After breakfast we had a lovely walk from our hotel to St Paul's Cathedral then we made our way across the Millennium Bridge and continued our walk along the South Bank past Studio 8 where they film This Morning and on to the London Eye to collect our tickets for our river cruise and London Eye experience which we were both really looking forward to.

After we had collected our tickets we had a few hours free until our river cruise so we decided to walk to Buckingham Palace going past Downing Street through Horse Guards Parade and through St James Park on the way.

We obviously took the obligatory tourist photos outside Buckingham Palace lol, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Royal family but unfortunately no one made an appearance.

One the way back to the Eye and our cruise we just about had time to squeeze in seeing the guards changing over in Horse Guards Parade which was really nice to stand and watch.

Well it was time for our cruise. Hayley only wanted to definitely do two things on this visit to London, one being this cruise we were about to embark on and the other being the go on the Eye which, we were going to do later in the day.

Being totally honest here I wasn't too sure how I was going to react to this cruise as I'm not very good on boats, the last time I went on a boat on the river Thames it took me absolutely ages to walk down the jetty just to get on the boat.

Well we queued up with everyone else awaiting our boat to come and pick us up for our river cruise, I was slightly nervous especially as every now and then I could feel the platform to which I was standing on moving up and down.

Once aboard the boat we took our seats near the side of the boat so we could see all the relevant points of interest that would be talked about along the river and awaited the off.

The lady giving the guided tour was absolutely fabulous. She was not only funny but was very knowledgeable and interacted well with the passengers who in turn interacted well with her which made the how cruise very well worthwhile.

After our very awesome river cruise we decided we'd just walk round and sight see London so to say, we didn't really know exactly where we were going or what we were going to see next we just decided to let the streets guide the way and randomly see where they took us.

Thankfully to save us getting too lost along the way I had a few ideas of where to go and what to see lol.

On our street walking adventure we visited Hamley's, a rather expensive bag and purse shop which some of you out there will know well, one my girlfriend particularly enjoyed going in which goes by the name of Michael Kors, the M&M store in Leicester Square, we walked through the vibrant streets of China Town, watched street performances both at Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus and we even squeezed in a quick look round the National Gallery too lol.

As the night was closing in there was time for one more main thing to do, the thing Hayley had been waiting all day to do and was so pleased that she was able to do it at night (thankfully it was not raining and there were clear skies overhead), yes it was time to go on the London Eye.

We made our way to the Eye and queued up awaiting our turn to enter the pod and start our rotation on the Eye.

As I previously said thankfully it wasn't raining and the sky was clear so you could see for literally what seems like miles and miles and to be fair it pretty much is as in the distance I could clearly make out the arch of Wembley which in itself is roughly 12 miles from the Eye.

Obviously the closer sights and attractions you could make out were awesome too.

The London Bridge one direction and Big Ben the other both being lite up clearly in the night sky.

Being on the Eye was pretty awesome to be honest especially as when the rotation of the wheel began it was still light and I was able to point out to Hayley the places we'd walked to and seen early in the day and as the wheel rotated future round the sky became darker yet it still was clear enough to see out and point out landmarks etc but by now lighting up the dark sky in their own way.

Going on the Eye at night and having such a lovely clear night to do it on really finished our day off with a beautiful and peaceful ended.

There's isn't much more to talk about after that apart from us doing the 4D London Eye cinema experience which was good and as we had brought the photo pass earlier in the day we got our final photo shot of the day to add to our others

and that's pretty much it to be honest, we made our way back to the hotel after that and after having a very long tiring day walking the streets of London we crashed when we go back and woke the next day and caught our train home.